Discourse 6. Knowledge Viewed in Relation to
Learning

1.

{124} IT were well if the English, like the Greek language,
possessed some definite word to express, simply and generally,
intellectual proficiency or perfection, such as "health," as
used with reference to the animal frame, and "virtue," with
reference to our moral nature. I am not able to find such a term;—talent,
ability, genius, belong distinctly to the raw material, which is the
subject-matter, not to that excellence which is the result of exercise
and training. When we turn, indeed, to the particular kinds of
intellectual perfection, words are forthcoming for our purpose, as,
for instance, judgment, taste, and skill; yet even these belong, for
the most part, to powers or habits bearing upon practice or upon art,
and not to any perfect condition of the intellect, considered in
itself. Wisdom, again, is certainly a more comprehensive word than any
other, but it has a direct relation to conduct, and to human life.
Knowledge, indeed, and Science express purely intellectual ideas, but
still not a state or quality of the intellect; for knowledge, in its
ordinary sense, is but one of its circumstances, denoting a possession
or a habit; and science has been appropriated to the subject-matter of
the intellect, instead of belonging in English, as it ought to do, to
the intellect itself. The {125} consequence is that, on an occasion
like this, many words are necessary, in order, first, to bring out and
convey what surely is no difficult idea in itself,—that of the
cultivation of the intellect as an end; next, in order to recommend
what surely is no unreasonable object; and lastly, to describe and
make the mind realize the particular perfection in which that object
consists. Every one knows practically what are the constituents of
health or of virtue; and every one recognizes health and virtue as
ends to be pursued; it is otherwise with intellectual excellence, and
this must be my excuse, if I seem to any one to be bestowing a good
deal of labour on a preliminary matter.

In default of a recognized term, I have called the perfection or
virtue of the intellect by the name of philosophy, philosophical
knowledge, enlargement of mind, or illumination; terms which are not
uncommonly given to it by writers of this day: but, whatever name we
bestow on it, it is, I believe, as a matter of history, the business
of a University to make this intellectual culture its direct scope, or
to employ itself in the education of the intellect,—just as the work
of a Hospital lies in healing the sick or wounded, of a Riding or
Fencing School, or of a Gymnasium, in exercising the limbs, of an
Almshouse, in aiding and solacing the old, of an Orphanage, in
protecting innocence, of a Penitentiary, in restoring the guilty. I
say, a University, taken in its bare idea, and before we view it as an
instrument of the Church, has this object and this mission; it
contemplates neither moral impression nor mechanical production; it
professes to exercise the mind neither in art nor in duty; its
function is intellectual culture; here it may leave its scholars, and
it has done its work when it has done as much as this. It educates the
intellect {126} to reason well in all matters, to reach out towards
truth, and to grasp it.

2.

This, I said in my foregoing Discourse, was the object of a
University, viewed in itself, and apart from the Catholic Church, or
from the State, or from any other power which may use it; and I
illustrated this in various ways. I said that the intellect must have
an excellence of its own, for there was nothing which had not its
specific good; that the word "educate" would not be used of
intellectual culture, as it is used, had not the intellect had an end
of its own; that, had it not such an end, there would be no meaning in
calling certain intellectual exercises "liberal," in
contrast with "useful," as is commonly done; that the very
notion of a philosophical temper implied it, for it threw us back upon
research and system as ends in themselves, distinct from effects and
works of any kind; that a philosophical scheme of knowledge, or system
of sciences, could not, from the nature of the case, issue in any one
definite art or pursuit, as its end; and that, on the other hand, the
discovery and contemplation of truth, to which research and
systematizing led, were surely sufficient ends, though nothing beyond
them were added, and that they had ever been accounted sufficient by
mankind.

Here then I take up the subject; and, having determined that the
cultivation of the intellect is an end distinct and sufficient in
itself, and that, so far as words go it is an enlargement or
illumination, I proceed to inquire what this mental breadth, or power,
or light, or philosophy consists in. A Hospital heals a broken limb or
cures a fever: what does an Institution effect, which professes the
health, not of the body, not of the soul, {127} but of the intellect?
What is this good, which in former times, as well as our own, has been
found worth the notice, the appropriation, of the Catholic Church?

I have then to investigate, in the Discourses which follow, those
qualities and characteristics of the intellect in which its
cultivation issues or rather consists; and, with a view of assisting
myself in this undertaking, I shall recur to certain questions which
have already been touched upon. These questions are three: viz. the
relation of intellectual culture, first, to mere knowledge;
secondly, to professional knowledge; and thirdly, to religious
knowledge. In other words, are acquirements and attainments
the scope of a University Education? or expertness in particular
arts and pursuits? or moral and religious proficiency? or
something besides these three? These questions I shall examine in
succession, with the purpose I have mentioned; and I hope to he
excused, if, in this anxious undertaking, I am led to repeat what,
either in these Discourses or elsewhere, I have already put upon
paper. And first, of Mere Knowledge, or Learning, and its
connexion with intellectual illumination or Philosophy.

3.

I suppose the primā-facie view which the public at large
would take of a University, considering it as a place of Education, is
nothing more or less than a place for acquiring a great deal of
knowledge on a great many subjects. Memory is one of the first
developed of the mental faculties; a boy's business when he goes to
school is to learn, that is, to store up things in his memory. For
some years his intellect is little more than an instrument for taking
in facts, or a receptacle for storing them; he welcomes them as fast
as they come to {128} him; he lives on what is without; he has his
eyes ever about him; he has a lively susceptibility of impressions; he
imbibes information of every kind; and little does he make his own in
a true sense of the word, living rather upon his neighbours all around
him. He has opinions, religious, political, and literary, and, for a
boy, is very positive in them and sure about them; but he gets them
from his schoolfellows, or his masters, or his parents, as the case
may be. Such as he is in his other relations, such also is he in his
school exercises; his mind is observant, sharp, ready, retentive; he
is almost passive in the acquisition of knowledge. I say this in no
disparagement of the idea of a clever boy. Geography, chronology,
history, language, natural history, he heaps up the matter of these
studies as treasures for a future day. It is the seven years of plenty
with him: he gathers in by handfuls, like the Egyptians, without
counting; and though, as time goes on, there is exercise for his
argumentative powers in the Elements of Mathematics, and for his taste
in the Poets and Orators, still, while at school, or at least, till
quite the last years of his time, he acquires, and little more; and
when he is leaving for the University, he is mainly the creature of
foreign influences and circumstances, and made up of accidents,
homogeneous or not, as the case may be. Moreover, the moral habits,
which are a boy's praise, encourage and assist this result; that is,
diligence, assiduity, regularity, despatch, persevering application;
for these are the direct conditions of acquisition, and naturally lead
to it. Acquirements, again, are emphatically producible, and at a
moment; they are a something to show, both for master and scholar; an
audience, even though ignorant themselves of the subjects of an
examination, can comprehend when questions are answered and when they
are not. {129} Here again is a reason why mental culture is in the
minds of men identified with the acquisition of knowledge.

The same notion possesses the public mind, when it passes on from
the thought of a school to that of a University: and with the best of
reasons so far as this, that there is no true culture without
acquirements, and that philosophy presupposes knowledge. It requires a
great deal of reading, or a wide range of information, to warrant us
in putting forth our opinions on any serious subject; and without such
learning the most original mind may be able indeed to dazzle, to
amuse, to refute, to perplex, but not to come to any useful result or
any trustworthy conclusion. There are indeed persons who profess a
different view of the matter, and even act upon it. Every now and then
you will find a person of vigorous or fertile mind, who relies upon
his own resources, despises all former authors, and gives the world,
with the utmost fearlessness, his views upon religion, or history, or
any other popular subject. And his works may sell for a while; he may
get a name in his day; but this will be all. His readers are sure to
find on the long run that his doctrines are mere theories, and not the
expression of facts, that they are chaff instead of bread, and then
his popularity drops as suddenly as it rose.

Knowledge then is the indispensable condition of expansion of mind,
and the instrument of attaining to it; this cannot be denied, it is
ever to be insisted on; I begin with it as a first principle; however,
the very truth of it carries men too far, and confirms to them the
notion that it is the whole of the matter. A narrow mind is thought to
be that which contains little knowledge; and an enlarged mind, that
which holds a great deal; and what seems to put the matter beyond
dispute is, the {130} fact of the great number of studies which are
pursued in a University, by its very profession. Lectures are given on
every kind of subject; examinations are held; prizes awarded. There
are moral, metaphysical, physical Professors; Professors of languages,
of history, of mathematics, of experimental science. Lists of
questions are published, wonderful for their range and depth, variety
and difficulty; treatises are written, which carry upon their very
face the evidence of extensive reading or multifarious information;
what then is wanting for mental culture to a person of large reading
and scientific attainments? what is grasp of mind but acquirement?
where shall philosophical repose be found, but in the consciousness
and enjoyment of large intellectual possessions?

And yet this notion is, I conceive, a mistake, and my present
business is to show that it is one, and that the end of a Liberal
Education is not mere knowledge, or knowledge considered in its matter;
and I shall best attain my object, by actually setting down some
cases, which will be generally granted to be instances of the process
of enlightenment or enlargement of mind, and others which are not, and
thus, by the comparison, you will be able to judge for yourselves,
Gentlemen, whether Knowledge, that is, acquirement, is after all the
real principle of the enlargement, or whether that principle is not
rather something beyond it.

4.

For instance [Note
1], let a person, whose experience has hitherto been confined to
the more calm and unpretending {131} scenery of these islands, whether
here or in England, go for the first time into parts where physical
nature puts on her wilder and more awful forms, whether at home or
abroad, as into mountainous districts; or let one, who has ever lived
in a quiet village, go for the first time to a great metropolis,—then
I suppose he will have a sensation which perhaps he never had before.
He has a feeling not in addition or increase of former feelings, but
of something different in its nature. He will perhaps be borne
forward, and find for a time that he has lost his bearings. He has
made a certain progress, and he has a consciousness of mental
enlargement; he does not stand where he did, he has a new centre, and
a range of thoughts to which he was before a stranger.

Again, the view of the heavens which the telescope opens upon us,
if allowed to fill and possess the mind, may almost whirl it round and
make it dizzy. It brings in a flood of ideas, and is rightly called an
intellectual enlargement, whatever is meant by the term.

And so again, the sight of beasts of prey and other foreign
animals, their strangeness, the originality (if I may use the term) of
their forms and gestures and habits and their variety and independence
of each other, throw us out of ourselves into another creation, and as
if under another Creator, if I may so express the temptation which may
come on the mind. We seem to have new faculties, or a new exercise for
our faculties, by this addition to our knowledge; like a prisoner,
who, having been accustomed to wear manacles or fetters, suddenly
finds his arms and legs free.

Hence Physical Science generally, in all its departments, as
bringing before us the exuberant riches and resources, yet the orderly
course, of the Universe, elevates and excites the student, and at
first, I may say, almost {132} takes away his breath, while in time it
exercises a tranquilizing influence upon him.

Again, the study of history is said to enlarge and enlighten the
mind, and why? because, as I conceive, it gives it a power of judging
of passing events, and of all events, and a conscious superiority over
them, which before it did not possess.

And in like manner, what is called seeing the world, entering into
active life, going into society, travelling, gaining acquaintance with
the various classes of the community, coming into contact with the
principles and modes of thought of various parties, interests, and
races, their views, aims, habits and manners, their religious creeds
and forms of worship,—gaining experience how various yet how alike
men are, how low-minded, how bad, how opposed, yet how confident in
their opinions; all this exerts a perceptible influence upon the mind,
which it is impossible to mistake, be it good or be it bad, and is
popularly called its enlargement.

And then again, the first time the mind comes across the arguments
and speculations of unbelievers, and feels what a novel light they
cast upon what he has hitherto accounted sacred; and still more, if it
gives in to them and embraces them, and throws off as so much
prejudice what it has hitherto held, and, as if waking from a dream,
begins to realize to its imagination that there is now no such thing
as law and the transgression of law, that sin is a phantom, and
punishment a bugbear, that it is free to sin, free to enjoy the world
and the flesh; and still further, when it does enjoy them, and
reflects that it may think and hold just what it will, that "the
world is all before it where to choose," and what system to build
up as its own private persuasion; when this torrent of wilful thoughts
rushes over and inundates it, who will {133} deny that the fruit of
the tree of knowledge, or what the mind takes for knowledge, has made
it one of the gods, with a sense of expansion and elevation,—an
intoxication in reality, still, so far as the subjective state of the
mind goes, an illumination? Hence the fanaticism of individuals or
nations, who suddenly cast off their Maker. Their eyes are opened;
and, like the judgment-stricken king in the Tragedy, they see two
suns, and a magic universe, out of which they look back upon their
former state of faith and innocence with a sort of contempt and
indignation, as if they were then but fools, and the dupes of
imposture.

On the other hand, Religion has its own enlargement, and an
enlargement, not of tumult, but of peace. It is often remarked of
uneducated persons, who have hitherto thought little of the unseen
world, that, on their turning to God, looking into themselves,
regulating their hearts, reforming their conduct, and meditating on
death and judgment, heaven and hell, they seem to become, in point of
intellect, different beings from what they were. Before, they took
things as they came, and thought no more of one thing than another.
But now every event has a meaning; they have their own estimate of
whatever happens to them; they are mindful of times and seasons, and
compare the present with the past; and the world, no longer dull,
monotonous, unprofitable, and hopeless, is a various and complicated
drama, with parts and an object, and an awful moral.

5.

Now from these instances, to which many more might be added, it is
plain, first, that the communication of knowledge certainly is either
a condition or the means of that sense of enlargement or
enlightenment, of which at this day we hear so much in certain
quarters: this {134} cannot be denied; but next, it is equally plain,
that such communication is not the whole of the process. The
enlargement consists, not merely in the passive reception into the
mind of a number of ideas unknown to it, but in the mind's energetic
and simultaneous action upon and towards and among those new ideas,
which are rushing in upon it. It is the action of a formative power,
reducing to order and meaning the matter of our acquirements; it is a
making the objects of our knowledge subjectively our own, or, to use a
familiar word, it is a digestion of what we receive, into the
substance of our previous state of thought; and without this no
enlargement is said to follow. There is no enlargement, unless there
be a comparison of ideas one with another, as they come before the
mind, and a systematizing of them. We feel our minds to be growing and
expanding then, when we not only learn, but refer what we learn
to what we know already. It is not the mere addition to our knowledge
that is the illumination; but the locomotion, the movement onwards, of
that mental centre, to which both what we know, and what we are
learning, the accumulating mass of our acquirements, gravitates. And
therefore a truly great intellect, and recognized to be such by the
common opinion of mankind, such as the intellect of Aristotle, or of
St. Thomas, or of Newton, or of Goethe, (I purposely take instances
within and without the Catholic pale, when I would speak of the
intellect as such,) is one which takes a connected view of old and
new, past and present, far and near, and which has an insight into the
influence of all these one on another; without which there is no
whole, and no centre. It possesses the knowledge, not only of things,
but also of their mutual and true relations; knowledge, not merely
considered as acquirement, but as philosophy. {135}

Accordingly, when this analytical, distributive, harmonizing
process is away, the mind experiences no enlargement, and is not
reckoned as enlightened or comprehensive, whatever it may add to its
knowledge. For instance, a great memory, as I have already said, does
not make a philosopher, any more than a dictionary can be called a
grammar. There are men who embrace in their minds a vast multitude of
ideas, but with little sensibility about their real relations towards
each other. These may be antiquarians, annalists, naturalists; they
may be learned in the law; they may be versed in statistics; they are
most useful in their own place; I should shrink from speaking
disrespectfully of them; still, there is nothing in such attainments
to guarantee the absence of narrowness of mind. If they are nothing
more than well-read men, or men of information, they have not what
specially deserves the name of culture of mind, or fulfils the type of
Liberal Education.

In like manner, we sometimes fall in with persons who have seen
much of the world, and of the men who, in their day, have played a
conspicuous part in it, but who generalize nothing, and have no
observation, in the true sense of the word. They abound in information
in detail, curious and entertaining, about men and things; and, having
lived under the influence of no very clear or settled principles,
religious or political, they speak of every one and every thing, only
as so many phenomena, which are complete in themselves, and lead to
nothing, not discussing them, or teaching any truth, or instructing
the hearer, but simply talking. No one would say that these persons,
well informed as they are, had attained to any great culture of
intellect or to philosophy.

The case is the same still more strikingly where the persons in
question are beyond dispute men of inferior {136} powers and deficient
education. Perhaps they have been much in foreign countries, and they
receive, in a passive, otiose, unfruitful way, the various facts which
are forced upon them there. Seafaring men, for example, range from one
end of the earth to the other; but the multiplicity of external
objects, which they have encountered, forms no symmetrical and
consistent picture upon their imagination; they see the tapestry of
human life, as it were on the wrong side, and it tells no story. They
sleep, and they rise up, and they find themselves, now in Europe, now
in Asia; they see visions of great cities and wild regions; they are
in the marts of commerce, or amid the islands of the South; they gaze
on Pompey's Pillar, or on the Andes; and nothing which meets them
carries them forward or backward, to any idea beyond itself. Nothing
has a drift or relation; nothing has a history or a promise. Every
thing stands by itself, and comes and goes in its turn, like the
shifting scenes of a show, which leave the spectator where he was.
Perhaps you are near such a man on a particular occasion, and expect
him to be shocked or perplexed at something which occurs; but one
thing is much the same to him as another, or, if he is perplexed, it
is as not knowing what to say, whether it is right to admire, or to
ridicule, or to disapprove, while conscious that some expression of
opinion is expected from him; for in fact he has no standard of
judgment at all, and no landmarks to guide him to a conclusion. Such
is mere acquisition, and, I repeat, no one would dream of calling it
philosophy.

6.

Instances, such as these, confirm, by the contrast, the conclusion
I have already drawn from those which preceded them. That only is true
enlargement of mind {137} which is the power of viewing many things at
once as one whole, of referring them severally to their true place in
the universal system, of understanding their respective values, and
determining their mutual dependence. Thus is that form of Universal
Knowledge, of which I have on a former occasion spoken, set up in the
individual intellect, and constitutes its perfection. Possessed of
this real illumination, the mind never views any part of the extended
subject-matter of Knowledge without recollecting that it is but a
part, or without the associations which spring from this recollection.
It makes every thing in some sort lead to every thing else; it would
communicate the image of the whole to every separate portion, till
that whole becomes in imagination like a spirit, every where pervading
and penetrating its component parts, and giving them one definite
meaning. Just as our bodily organs, when mentioned, recall their
function in the body, as the word "creation" suggests the
Creator, and "subjects" a sovereign, so, in the mind of the
Philosopher, as we are abstractedly conceiving of him, the elements of
the physical and moral world, sciences, arts, pursuits, ranks,
offices, events, opinions, individualities, are all viewed as one,
with correlative functions, and as gradually by successive
combinations converging, one and all, to the true centre.

To have even a portion of this illuminative reason and true
philosophy is the highest state to which nature can aspire, in the way
of intellect; it puts the mind above the influences of chance and
necessity, above anxiety, suspense, unsettlement, and superstition,
which is the lot of the many. Men, whose minds are possessed with some
one object, take exaggerated views of its importance, are feverish in
the pursuit of it, make it the measure of things which are utterly
foreign to it, and {138} are startled and despond if it happens to
fail them. They are ever in alarm or in transport. Those on the other
hand who have no object or principle whatever to hold by, lose their
way, every step they take. They are thrown out, and do not know what
to think or say, at every fresh juncture; they have no view of
persons, or occurrences, or facts, which come suddenly upon them, and
they hang upon the opinion of others, for want of internal resources.
But the intellect, which has been disciplined to the perfection of its
powers, which knows, and thinks while it knows, which has learned to
leaven the dense mass of facts and events with the elastic force of
reason, such an intellect cannot be partial, cannot be exclusive,
cannot be impetuous, cannot be at a loss, cannot but be patient,
collected, and majestically calm, because it discerns the end in every
beginning, the origin in every end, the law in every interruption, the
limit in each delay; because it ever knows where it stands, and how
its path lies from one point to another. It is the [tetragonos]
of the Peripatetic, and has the "nil admirari" of the Stoic,—

There are men who, when in difficulties, originate at the moment
vast ideas or dazzling projects; who, under the influence of
excitement, are able to cast a light, almost as if from inspiration,
on a subject or course of action which comes before them; who have a
sudden presence of mind equal to any emergency, rising with the
occasion, and an undaunted magnanimous bearing, and an energy and
keenness which is but made intense by opposition. This is genius, this
is heroism; it is the exhibition of a natural gift, which no culture
can teach, at which no {139} Institution can aim; here, on the
contrary, we are concerned, not with mere nature, but with training
and teaching. That perfection of the Intellect, which is the result of
Education, and its beau ideal, to be imparted to individuals in
their respective measures, is the clear, calm, accurate vision and
comprehension of all things, as far as the finite mind can embrace
them, each in its place, and with its own characteristics upon it. It
is almost prophetic from its knowledge of history; it is almost
heart-searching from its knowledge of human nature; it has almost
supernatural charity from its freedom from littleness and prejudice;
it has almost the repose of faith, because nothing can startle it; it
has almost the beauty and harmony of heavenly contemplation, so
intimate is it with the eternal order of things and the music of the
spheres.

7.

And now, if I may take for granted that the true and adequate end
of intellectual training and of a University is not Learning or
Acquirement, but rather, is Thought or Reason exercised upon
Knowledge, or what may be called Philosophy, I shall be in a position
to explain the various mistakes which at the present day beset the
subject of University Education.

I say then, if we would improve the intellect, first of all, we
must ascend; we cannot gain real knowledge on a level; we must
generalize, we must reduce to method, we must have a grasp of
principles, and group and shape our acquisitions by means of them. It
matters not whether our field of operation be wide or limited; in
every case, to command it, is to mount above it. Who has not felt the
irritation of mind and impatience created by a deep, rich country,
visited for the first time, {140} with winding lanes, and high hedges,
and green steeps, and tangled woods, and every thing smiling indeed,
but in a maze? The same feeling comes upon us in a strange city, when
we have no map of its streets. Hence you hear of practised travellers,
when they first come into a place, mounting some high hill or church
tower, by way of reconnoitring its neighbourhood. In like manner, you
must be above your knowledge, not under it, or it will oppress you;
and the more you have of it, the greater will be the load. The
learning of a Salmasius or a Burman, unless you are its master, will
be your tyrant. "Imperat aut servit;" if you can wield it
with a strong arm, it is a great weapon; otherwise,

Vis consili expers
Mole ruit suā.

You will be overwhelmed, like Tarpeia, by the heavy wealth which
you have exacted from tributary generations.

Instances abound; there are authors who are as pointless as they
are inexhaustible in their literary resources. They measure knowledge
by bulk, as it lies in the rude block, without symmetry, without
design. How many commentators are there on the Classics, how many on
Holy Scripture, from whom we rise up, wondering at the learning which
has passed before us, and wondering why it passed! How many writers
are there of Ecclesiastical History, such as Mosheim or Du Pin, who,
breaking up their subject into details, destroy its life, and defraud
us of the whole by their anxiety about the parts! The Sermons, again,
of the English Divines in the seventeenth century, how often are they
mere repertories of miscellaneous and officious learning! Of course
Catholics also may read without thinking; and {141} in their case,
equally as with Protestants, it holds good, that such knowledge is
unworthy of the name, knowledge which they have not thought through,
and thought out. Such readers are only possessed by their knowledge,
not possessed of it; nay, in matter of fact they are often even
carried away by it, without any volition of their own. Recollect, the
Memory can tyrannize, as well as the Imagination. Derangement, I
believe, has been considered as a loss of control over the sequence of
ideas. The mind, once set in motion, is henceforth deprived of the
power of initiation, and becomes the victim of a train of
associations, one thought suggesting another, in the way of cause and
effect, as if by a mechanical process, or some physical necessity. No
one, who has had experience of men of studious habits, but must
recognize the existence of a parallel phenomenon in the case of those
who have over-stimulated the Memory. In such persons Reason acts
almost as feebly and as impotently as in the madman; once fairly
started on any subject whatever, they have no power of self-control;
they passively endure the succession of impulses which are evolved out
of the original exciting cause; they are passed on from one idea to
another and go steadily forward, plodding along one line of thought in
spite of the amplest concessions of the hearer, or wandering from it
in endless digression in spite of his remonstrances. Now, if, as is
very certain, no one would envy the madman the glow and originality of
his conceptions, why must we extol the cultivation of that intellect,
which is the prey, not indeed of barren fancies but of barren facts,
of random intrusions from without, though not of morbid imaginations
from within? And in thus speaking, I am not denying that a strong and
ready memory is in itself a real treasure; I am not disparaging a
well-stored {142} mind, though it be nothing besides, provided it be
sober, any more than I would despise a bookseller's shop:—it is of
great value to others, even when not so to the owner. Nor am I
banishing, far from it, the possessors of deep and multifarious
learning from my ideal University; they adorn it in the eyes of men; I
do but say that they constitute no type of the results at which it
aims; that it is no great gain to the intellect to have enlarged the
memory at the expense of faculties which are indisputably higher.

8.

Nor indeed am I supposing that there is any great danger, at least
in this day, of over-education; the danger is on the other side. I
will tell you, Gentlemen, what has been the practical error of the
last twenty years,—not to load the memory of the student with a mass
of undigested knowledge, but to force upon him so much that he has
rejected all. It has been the error of distracting and enfeebling the
mind by an unmeaning profusion of subjects; of implying that a
smattering in a dozen branches of study is not shallowness, which it
really is, but enlargement, which it is not; of considering an
acquaintance with the learned names of things and persons, and the
possession of clever duodecimos, and attendance on eloquent lecturers,
and membership with scientific institutions, and the sight of the
experiments of a platform and the specimens of a museum, that all this
was not dissipation of mind, but progress. All things now are to be
learned at once, not first one thing, then another, not one well, but
many badly. Learning is to be without exertion, without attention,
without toil; without grounding, without advance, without finishing.
There is to be nothing individual in it; and this, forsooth, is the
wonder {143} of the age. What the steam engine does with matter, the
printing press is to do with mind; it is to act mechanically, and the
population is to be passively, almost unconsciously enlightened, by
the mere multiplication and dissemination of volumes. Whether it be
the school boy, or the school girl, or the youth at college, or the
mechanic in the town, or the politician in the senate, all have been
the victims in one way or other of this most preposterous and
pernicious of delusions. Wise men have lifted up their voices in vain;
and at length, lest their own institutions should be outshone and
should disappear in the folly of the hour, they have been obliged, as
far as they could with a good conscience, to humour a spirit which
they could not withstand, and make temporizing concessions at which
they could not but inwardly smile.

It must not be supposed that, because I so speak, therefore I have
some sort of fear of the education of the people: on the contrary, the
more education they have, the better, so that it is really education.
Nor am I an enemy to the cheap publication of scientific and literary
works, which is now in vogue: on the contrary, I consider it a great
advantage, convenience, and gain; that is, to those to whom education
has given a capacity for using them. Further, I consider such innocent
recreations as science and literature are able to furnish will be a
very fit occupation of the thoughts and the leisure of young persons,
and may be made the means of keeping them from bad employments and bad
companions. Moreover, as to that superficial acquaintance with
chemistry, and geology, and astronomy, and political economy, and
modern history, and biography, and other branches of knowledge, which
periodical literature and occasional lectures and scientific
institutions diffuse through the {144} community, I think it a
graceful accomplishment, and a suitable, nay, in this day a necessary
accomplishment, in the case of educated men. Nor, lastly, am I
disparaging or discouraging the thorough acquisition of any one of
these studies, or denying that, as far as it goes, such thorough
acquisition is a real education of the mind. All I say is, call things
by their right names, and do not confuse together ideas which are
essentially different. A thorough knowledge of one science and a
superficial acquaintance with many, are not the same thing; a
smattering of a hundred things or a memory for detail, is not a
philosophical or comprehensive view. Recreations are not education;
accomplishments are not education. Do not say, the people must be
educated, when, after all, you only mean, amused, refreshed, soothed,
put into good spirits and good humour, or kept from vicious excesses.
I do not say that such amusements, such occupations of mind, are not a
great gain; but they are not education. You may as well call drawing
and fencing education, as a general knowledge of botany or conchology.
Stuffing birds or playing stringed instruments is an elegant pastime,
and a resource to the idle, but it is not education; it does not form
or cultivate the intellect. Education is a high word; it is the
preparation for knowledge, and it is the imparting of knowledge in
proportion to that preparation. We require intellectual eyes to know
withal, as bodily eyes for sight. We need both objects and organs
intellectual; we cannot gain them without setting about it; we cannot
gain them in our sleep, or by haphazard. The best telescope does not
dispense with eyes; the printing press or the lecture room will assist
us greatly, but we must be true to ourselves, we must be parties in
the work. A University is, according to the usual designation, an Alma
{145} Mater, knowing her children one by one, not a foundry, or a
mint, or a treadmill.

9.

I protest to you, Gentlemen, that if I had to choose between a
so-called University, which dispensed with residence and tutorial
superintendence, and gave its degrees to any person who passed an
examination in a wide range of subjects, and a University which had no
professors or examinations at all, but merely brought a number of
young men together for three or four years, and then sent them away as
the University of Oxford is said to have done some sixty years since,
if I were asked which of these two methods was the better discipline
of the intellect,—mind, I do not say which is morally the
better, for it is plain that compulsory study must be a good and
idleness an intolerable mischief,—but if I must determine which of
the two courses was the more successful in training, moulding,
enlarging the mind, which sent out men the more fitted for their
secular duties, which produced better public men, men of the world,
men whose names would descend to posterity, I have no hesitation in
giving the preference to that University which did nothing, over that
which exacted of its members an acquaintance with every science under
the sun. And, paradox as this may seem, still if results be the test
of systems, the influence of the public schools and colleges of
England, in the course of the last century, at least will bear out one
side of the contrast as I have drawn it. What would come, on the other
hand, of the ideal systems of education which have fascinated the
imagination of this age, could they ever take effect, and whether they
would not produce a generation frivolous, narrow-minded, and
resourceless, intellectually considered, {146} is a fair subject for
debate; but so far is certain, that the Universities and scholastic
establishments, to which I refer, and which did little more than bring
together first boys and then youths in large numbers, these
institutions, with miserable deformities on the side of morals, with a
hollow profession of Christianity, and a heathen code of ethics,—I
say, at least they can boast of a succession of heroes and statesmen,
of literary men and philosophers, of men conspicuous for great natural
virtues, for habits of business, for knowledge of life, for practical
judgment, for cultivated tastes, for accomplishments, who have made
England what it is,—able to subdue the earth, able to domineer over
Catholics.

How is this to be explained? I suppose as follows: When a multitude
of young men, keen, open-hearted, sympathetic, and observant, as young
men are, come together and freely mix with each other, they are sure
to learn one from another, even if there be no one to teach them; the
conversation of all is a series of lectures to each, and they gain for
themselves new ideas and views, fresh matter of thought, and distinct
principles for judging and acting, day by day. An infant has to learn
the meaning of the information which its senses convey to it, and this
seems to be its employment. It fancies all that the eye presents to it
to be close to it, till it actually learns the contrary, and thus by
practice does it ascertain the relations and uses of those first
elements of knowledge which are necessary for its animal existence. A
parallel teaching is necessary for our social being, and it is secured
by a large school or a college; and this effect may be fairly called
in its own department an enlargement of mind. It is seeing the world
on a small field with little trouble; for the pupils or students come
from very different places, and {147} with widely different notions,
and there is much to generalize, much to adjust, much to eliminate,
there are inter-relations to be defined, and conventional rules to be
established, in the process, by which the whole assemblage is moulded
together, and gains one tone and one character.

Let it be clearly understood, I repeat it, that I am not taking
into account moral or religious considerations; I am but saying that
that youthful community will constitute a whole, it will embody a
specific idea, it will represent a doctrine, it will administer a code
of conduct, and it will furnish principles of thought and action. It
will give birth to a living teaching, which in course of time will
take the shape of a self-perpetuating tradition, or a genius loci,
as it is sometimes called; which haunts the home where it has been
born, and which imbues and forms, more or less, and one by one, every
individual who is successively brought under its shadow. Thus it is
that, independent of direct instruction on the part of Superiors,
there is a sort of self-education in the academic institutions of
Protestant England; a characteristic tone of thought, a recognized
standard of judgment is found in them, which, as developed in the
individual who is submitted to it, becomes a twofold source of
strength to him, both from the distinct stamp it impresses on his
mind, and from the bond of union which it creates between him and
others,—effects which are shared by the authorities of the place,
for they themselves have been educated in it, and at all times are
exposed to the influence of its ethical atmosphere. Here then is a
real teaching, whatever be its standards and principles, true or
false; and it at least tends towards cultivation of the intellect; it
at least recognizes that knowledge is something more than a sort of
passive reception of scraps and {148} details; it is a something, and
it does a something, which never will issue from the most strenuous
efforts of a set of teachers, with no mutual sympathies and no
inter-communion, of a set of examiners with no opinions which they
dare profess, and with no common principles, who are teaching or
questioning a set of youths who do not know them, and do not know each
other, on a large number of subjects, different in kind, and connected
by no wide philosophy, three times a week, or three times a year, or
once in three years, in chill lecture-rooms or on a pompous
anniversary.

10.

Nay, self-education in any shape, in the most restricted sense, is
preferable to a system of teaching which, professing so much, really
does so little for the mind. Shut your College gates against the
votary of knowledge, throw him back upon the searchings and the
efforts of his own mind; he will gain by being spared an entrance into
your Babel. Few indeed there are who can dispense with the stimulus
and support of instructors, or will do any thing at all, if left to
themselves. And fewer still (though such great minds are to be found),
who will not, from such unassisted attempts, contract a self-reliance
and a self-esteem, which are not only moral evils, but serious
hindrances to the attainment of truth. And next to none, perhaps, or
none, who will not be reminded from time to time of the disadvantage
under which they lie, by their imperfect grounding, by the breaks,
deficiencies, and irregularities of their knowledge, by the
eccentricity of opinion and the confusion of principle which they
exhibit. They will be too often ignorant of what every one knows and
takes for granted, of that multitude of small truths which fall upon
the {149} mind like dust, impalpable and ever accumulating; they may
be unable to converse, they may argue perversely, they may pride
themselves on their worst paradoxes or their grossest truisms, they
may be full of their own mode of viewing things, unwilling to be put
out of their way, slow to enter into the minds of others;—but, with
these and whatever other liabilities upon their heads, they are likely
to have more thought, more mind, more philosophy, more true
enlargement, than those earnest but ill-used persons, who are forced
to load their minds with a score of subjects against an examination,
who have too much on their hands to indulge themselves in thinking or
investigation, who devour premiss and conclusion together with
indiscriminate greediness, who hold whole sciences on faith, and
commit demonstrations to memory, and who too often, as might be
expected, when their period of education is passed, throw up all they
have learned in disgust, having gained nothing really by their anxious
labours, except perhaps the habit of application.

Yet such is the better specimen of the fruit of that ambitious
system which has of late years been making way among us: for its
result on ordinary minds, and on the common run of students, is less
satisfactory still; they leave their place of education simply
dissipated and relaxed by the multiplicity of subjects, which they
have never really mastered, and so shallow as not even to know their
shallowness. How much better, I say, is it for the active and
thoughtful intellect, where such is to be found, to eschew the College
and the University altogether, than to submit to a drudgery so
ignoble, a mockery so contumelious! How much more profitable for the
independent mind, after the mere rudiments of education, to range
through a library at random, taking {150} down books as they meet him,
and pursuing the trains of thought which his mother wit suggests! How
much healthier to wander into the fields, and there with the exiled
Prince to find "tongues in the trees, books in the running
brooks!" How much more genuine an education is that of the poor
boy in the Poem [Note
2]—a Poem, whether in conception or in execution, one of the
most touching in our language—who, not in the wide world, but
ranging day by day around his widowed mother's home, "a dexterous
gleaner" in a narrow field, and with only such slender outfit

"as the village school and books a few
Supplied,"

contrived from the beach, and the quay, and the fisher's boat, and
the inn's fireside, and the tradesman's shop, and the shepherd's walk,
and the smuggler's hut, and the mossy moor, and the screaming gulls,
and the restless waves, to fashion for himself a philosophy and a
poetry of his own!

But in a large subject, I am exceeding my necessary limits.
Gentlemen, I must conclude abruptly; and postpone any summing up of my
argument, should that be necessary, to another day.

Notes

1. The pages which follow are taken almost verbatim from the author's
14th (Oxford) University Sermon, which, at the time of writing this
Discourse, he did not expect ever to reprint.Return to text

2. Crabbe's Tales
of the Hall. This Poem, let me say, I read on its first publication,
above thirty years ago, with extreme delight, and have never lost my
love of it; and on taking it up lately, found I was even more touched
by it than heretofore. A work which can please in youth and age, seems
to fulfil (in logical language) the accidental definition of a
Classic. [A further course of twenty years has past, and I bear the
same witness in favour of this Poem.]Return to text